Numbers

This is an updated version of a Facebook "note" I wrote earlier this year. I was reminded of it this morning as I began reading "The Zookeeper's Wife," a story based in WWII Poland, and decided to post it to my blog.


Sometimes, looking at numbers is the only way we (or maybe just I) can attempt to truly comprehend the scale and totality of major historical events. World War II is this way. We know so many were murdered, but it seems that the more generalities we hear about it, the less we understand the gravity, which is always dangerous. As a history major with a focus on modern European history, I have heard and memorized so much about World War II and the decades surrounding the war that over the years I (unwittingly) adopted a deadened mindset, an emotional detachment to the staggering facts that emerged after the bloody dust settled - until I took Jordanna Bailkin's wonderful "20th Century Europe" class. Below are some of the more shocking overarching statistics Professor Bailkin presented that really reinstated that sense of terrible awe that we must always keep with us if we are to keep these horrors from happening again. As Churchill himself pondered in 1947, "What is Europe now? A rubble heap...."

In the Warsaw Ghetto, 0.5 million people were crammed into 1 square mile.

1/3rd of the Jewish population of the WORLD was killed in the war years.

66% of all WWII deaths were CIVILIAN (compared to 5% of WWI deaths).

The Soviet Union alone lost 23-26,000,000 people, and 70,000 Soviet villages were totally destroyed.

After the war, the average Soviet lived on 600 calories per day.

Britain had 60,000,000 changes of addresses because of bomb damage.

90% of German houses were uninhabitable post-war.

90,000 German women in Berlin alone sought medical treatment for rape after the Soviet invasion.

14,000,000 people were on the road in the summer of 1945.

There were 11,000,000 people categorized as Displaced Persons, and the last DP camp could not close until 1957.

Boxes

     Today I finally (I moved home June 12th... I am a procrastinator) decided to seriously do work on my many boxes of stuff from college. The 10 or so good-size cardboard boxes, obstructing any moderately-easy entry into my room, have been a constant source of frustration the past few weeks, concerning movement, visual appeal, and, most annoyingly, time management - I have been late to multiple appointments because I couldn't seem to find anything despite my careful packing.

     Getting rid of the boxes seemed like a daunting task. However, since I'm generally an all-or-nothing kind of person at least when it comes to organizing, I naturally believed that the other even larger boxes and bins encircling my room, from my pre-UW years, had to be seriously re-evaluated as well. I set about tackling everything, haphazardly moving back and forth between emptying the new boxes and organizing the old containers, one filled with Whitman memorabilia, the ones under my bed containing treasures from my childhood I had clung on to and then hidden away in high school.

     When I organize, I organize, and I love it. Yet my afternoon was bittersweet. I promised myself I would throw away anything and everything that had ceased to be truly meaningful, but as bag after bag of garbage filled with school newspapers, event fliers, sermon notes, and the like, so too did my heart overflow over and over again as I carefully placed each important item I decided to keep into its respective small box. It's amazing how memories - startlingly sharp, often carrying smells, static snapshots, sounds - can surge up out of the wilderness falsely known as "forgotten," not actually lost but merely waiting to released, relishing the surprise and emotions they can so easily evoke. A few movie ticket stubs; a heartwarming letter of affection, still in its envelope; messages and pictures scrawled on a napkin; loving notes of encouragement from hard times, from holidays, and sometimes just because... all of these and many more I stacked into the boxes I will save. I want to detail all of them here, to describe the memories (many hilarious, some heart-wrenching but just as important) attached to each, to thank personally in this blog post the many amazing Nohitas, INN-goers and leaders, Whitman Kappas and sectionmates, high school friends, neighborhood gals, and besties in general, for how important they have been in my life, each of whom I missed sorely one by one as I opened the boxes of my past. I have always been one for reminiscing, for shoutouts and inside jokes. Yet I know that this task would be almost as impossible as finally making my room presentable once again, and definitely less personable being on the internet, so I promise myself I will let them all - you all - know somehow, sometime soon, how much they - you - have meant in my life. And, hopefully, will continue to be. Today, wading through my room, warmed by the rare sun sparkling the dust that seemed never to settle, listening off and on to Pandora's "Lollipop" station (the Chordettes, not the Lil Wayne version), I realized again for the first time in a while how truly blessed my life has been.

     To conclude, as I went through the last of a stack of documents I had constantly been adding to over the past two years, I discovered a single sheet of paper that I think all the student leaders received at a retreat Sophomore or Junior year. The top of the paper reads, "Who God Is," and the rest is filled with words and corresponding verses. "Abba, Advocate, Almighty, Alpha, Ancient of Days"... the list was long. I glanced at the back - and noticed my handwriting. I had taken chosen words from the list, and, during a time of reflection, had written what each meant in my own life. The notes I made really encouraged me today, as I sat in my sweats in the midst of half-empty boxes, stacks of papers, and piles of clothes, worrying about my future and finally beginning to comprehend that a huge irrevocable change was happening in my own and in my friends' lives. This is what I wrote:

"God is an apostle, therefore he teaches me.
God is the author of life, therefore my life is written and known.
God is the bread of life, therefore I am fed.
God is the bright morning star, therefore I am led.
God is the carpenter, therefore I am lovingly crafted.
God is the chief shepherd, therefore I am watched and guided with care.
God is the cornerstone, therefore my life has a firm foundation.
God is the beginning and end, therefore I have nothing to fear."


Apparently, God also knows how to speak to us right when we need it. :)

 

...and just for good measure, because this memory is one I will NEVER forget:

Virtuous (?) Vikings

Currently I am enrolled in a class called The Vikings, which I signed up for because 1. I heard the class was easy, and 2. I am taking my senior seminar at the same time and need to focus on that paper. I did not sign up because I was interested in old men who raped and pillaged and burned monasteries. But the Vikings, as I soon learned, had much more to them than what we see in popular culture. The Vikings didn't just sail the high seas - they had an active role in government at home. They valued family above all else. They invented a rhythmic and metaphorical form of poetry, and told heroic stories about the quest for good over evil. The Vikings didn't even wear the scary horned helmets that we imagine they did. But what struck me most of all is the fact that the Vikings were wise. Here are a few of my favorite sayings from Hávamál, a poem from the Poetic Edda ... and my own translations:

There is mingling in friendship when man can utter
all his whole mind to another;
there is nought so vile as a fickle tongue;
no friend is he who but flatters.

     = be honest with friends

Less good than they say for the sons of men
is the drinking oft of ale:
for the more they drink, the less can they think
and keep a watch o'er their wits.

     = more drinking = less thinking

The miserable man and evil minded
makes of all things mockery,
and knows not that which he best should know,
that he is not free from faults.

     = no one is perfect, including you

Long is the round to a false friend leading,
e'en if he dwell on the way:
but though far off fared, to a faithful friend
straight are the roads and short.

     = a good friend is always near at heart

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die, --
the doom on each one dead.

     = one's reputation lives on forever

and finally, my favorite, and probably the most true:

Let him speak soft words and offer wealth
who longs for a woman's love,
praise the shape of the shining maid --
he wins who thus doth woo.

      = compliment and give stuff to girls and they will like you

Haha... jk about the last one.

Not a Viking in so many ways

Sunday Night Sketching

Today my friend Abby and I went shopping in the Southcenter/Renton area. This turned out to be a terrible (awesome) idea. Below, my purchases:

-An excessive amount of picture frames for photos I probably won't get around to printing for a really, really long time

-South of Broad, a book that had to buy (even though school starts imminently) because it is based in South Carolina and has an idyllic drawing of a little southern town on the cover

-A Disney Princess sticker book, that I convinced myself I will use for a collage in one of the picture frames mentioned above

-Three huge candles that were 50% off and don't have holders

-A bag of Swedish Fish (from Ikea)

And finally... a sketchpad and charcoals. In effect, a lot of stuff I do not need. But in my defense I did eat most of the Swedish Fish, and, to prove to myself that I didn't waste $10 on a bunch of black sooty rocks, I drew a little eye. See below.

So worth it.

Setting Out

I recently found a plethora of old diaries while deep-cleaning my bedroom. To my disappointment, but unsurprisingly, a few had a page or two of writing, and the rest were empty - testimony to the fact that I've never been enamored with journaling. To be honest with myself, I might never be. I think two fears are at play.

I've always struggled to find my own voice when I write, and I honestly believe that my childhood obsession with reading fiction (especially historical fiction journals - Dear America series, anyone?) has something to do with it. When I write about myself, I want to explain what I truly feel, but my words always seem overly dramatized, pretentious, and novel-esque. I seem to be able to write in anyone's voice but my own. A pilgrim, a British queen, a pioneer, a sailor - I can immediately imagine what they would say, how they would say it - but myself? I have no clue, and never have. I remember struggling through "morning pages" in my high school creative writing class, attempting to write in stream-of-conscience but just wanting to detail anyone else's life but my own and ending up with the blabber of a ten-year-old. I am able to pour out words in my hardest times, and I have written a few pages of intense introspection at church retreats or on mission trips, but these are rare occasions. When I am not highly emotional or encouraged, I don't write about myself. I don't know how to write me.

Secondly, I tend to stay away from journals because they have always seemed horribly burdensome. I remember one period in junior high when I tried to write in a diary every day, and it was torturous. I stayed up an extra two hours each night in bed trying to get every boring event down - and that journal lasted less than a week. I just didn't see the payoff.

Recently, however, a few of my friends have finally inspired me to face my fear of journaling and make a compromise: a blog. Here's my deal to myself: I will post whenever, and whatever. And here's my hope: Without the paralyzing pressure of feeling the need to chronicle every anxiety, idea, meal, shopping excursion, and embarrassing moment that has always scared me away from fully dedicating myself to a journal; without the worry that my words won't be cohesive, or eloquent, or written in the perfect "voice;" without even making my blog a "journal," in the diary sense - hopefully this way I can just get something down. Over the past few years I've begun to realize that writing down your thoughts is an amazing way to grow, and maybe with this blog I will begin to discover more of myself. No promises of anything groundbreaking or inspiring - sometimes I just need to share what's on my heart.